Michael Patrick/News Sentinel
Tennessee Department of Transportation Commissioner John Schroer announces that rebuilding three piers on the Henley Bridge will cause an additional delay to the project during a press conference Monday in South Knoxville.

State transportation officials will try "a pillar within a pillar" solution to address deteriorating piers on the Henley Bridge, but the new work will extend the closure until February 2014.

Tennessee Department of Transportation Commissioner John Schroer said the reopening date has been extended from June 30, 2013, to Feb. 28, 2014. The contractor, Britton Bridge, LLC, faces daily penalties of $1,000 for missing the new reopening date.

Schroer said that while the bridge will be open to traffic in February 2014, the contractor has until June 3, 2014, to finish the project. Britton Bridge faces penalties of $4,500 daily for missing the completion date. There is no incentive bonus for finishing sooner.

The added pier work will cost $6 million. Along with other changes, the price tag of the project has grown from $24.7 million to nearly $32 million.

Elected officials and South Knoxville businesses are not welcoming the additional closure time. The bridge, which carried 38,813 vehicles daily, has been closed since Jan. 3, 2011.

"I am extremely disappointed that the Henley Bridge opening will be delayed, and I continue to be very concerned about the impact on Chapman Highway businesses and South Knoxville residents," Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero said after she and Knox County Mayor Tim Burchett met with Schroer.

"This thing has gone further than it should," Emery said. "They should have tore it down and started over."

Burchett said he hopes to enlist Rogero and City Councilman Nick Pavlis of South Knoxville in an effort to persuade state authorities to provide some tax relief for merchants south of the bridge. He wants the state to exempt South Knoxville merchants from the state sales tax during the closure.

"Even a few hundred dollars can make a difference for some of these small businesses," Burchett said.

"We give these huge corporations tax breaks, why can't we help these local entrepreneurs? Right now the people of South Knoxville are struggling."

Schroer publicly announced the extended closure Monday on the south side of the bridge project.

"The delay was inevitable," Schroer said. "I know this is a burden, but it is just what it is. This project will add 50 years to this historic bridge."

In mid-December 2012, TDOT concluded that the amount of deterioration on three of the seven sets of piers that support the 81-year-old bridge showed evidence of more weathering than anticipated.

TDOT officials said there was no way to know the extent of deterioration of the 2-foot-thick concrete and rebar in the piers until workers began digging into the concrete.

"We wish we had an X-ray machine to look into these structures, but the technology just isn't there," said Paul Degges, chief engineer with TDOT. "There's just no way to do that."

Authorities originally thought workers would have to remove the degraded portion of piers and pour new pillars. Schroer said the demolition alone for that course of action would have taken six months. Rebuilding the piers then would delay opening the bridge until September 2014.

TDOT Project Supervisor Kristin Qualls devised a plan to provide support without the extended closure, with workers pouring a pier within the existing, three-sided piers.

Qualls' concept involves "pouring a pier within a pier," said Steve Borden, director of TDOT Region 1, which includes East Tennessee. On piers 3, 4 and 5 — counting from the north side — workers will pour a concrete pillar 5 feet by 6 feet inside the existing piers. The bottom of the new pillar will be where the arches connect to the existing piers.

Qualls said 450-460 cubic yards of concrete will be poured inside the existing piers to create a load-bearing pillar 63-72 feet high. She said 4,300 metal bars will be doweled into the existing piers to create a solid bond with the newly poured pillars.

Borden, Degges and Wayne Seger, who oversees the TDOT bridge division, said they were unaware of the "pillar within a pillar" concept being tried elsewhere in Tennessee.

Degges said after the bridge is reopened in February 2014, workers will begin patching degraded concrete on the outside of piers 3, 4 and 5. By then, Degges said, that work will be entirely cosmetic.

About 30 members of the group Bridges to Justice attended Schroer's announcement to question him about worker safety. Two Britton Bridge employees died in 2011 on the Henley Bridge project because of safety issues. TDOT shut the project down for a couple weeks to review safety standards at the project.

Two Britton Bridge employees are on strike because of safety concerns. Schroer fielded questions from the group, saying Britton Bridge workers continually undergo safety training and the Tennessee Occupational Safety and Health Administration conducts safety inspections at the site.

John Stewart with Bridges to Justice said his group continues to see safety hazards such as metal rebar jutting out of concrete without safety caps on the ends to prevent impaling a falling worker, improperly secured life jackets on workers on the water and improper use of harnesses by employees high in the air.

"We're still concerned that there's a lack of a culture of safety on this project," Stewart said. "From talking to workers, we know there are safety concerns."